


like you're made of glass

by vannes



Series: Kindergarten Teacher Laurent [4]
Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Gen, Past-Midnight Conversations, references to past abuse, talking in circles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 12:19:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13189953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vannes/pseuds/vannes
Summary: Nicaise wakes up in the middle of the night more often than not, but it hasn’t been like this in a long time.





	like you're made of glass

**Author's Note:**

> It's one in the morning and i wrote this in an hour without proofreading it and i have a funeral tomorrow and i don't really know what to do about it. but it's okay, and i'll be okay. nicaise and laurent will be okay. 
> 
> [title from 5am; listen to it while you read maybe?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW_feQCObEI)

Nicaise wakes up in the middle of the night more often than not, but it hasn’t been like this in a long time. _This_ being the sweat plastering his hair to his forehead; the pounding rhythm of his heart in his ears; the bile rising at the back of his throat. Emile is still passed out, arm slung across the mattress where Nicaise should be. His mouth is open, the sheets are tangled up in his legs, his shirt has ridden up to expose his smooth stomach. Nicaise stands in the doorway that separates the bedroom from the hallway of Laurent’s house and watches him that comes from the light behind the mostly-closed bathroom door.

 _I can’t sleep with the lights off_ , Emile had told him, a few weeks after they’d started regularly crashing in each others’ dorm rooms. Since then, Nicaise has made it a habit to leave a light on before he crawls into bed, though it’s still usually at least a few hours after Emile. And it’s nice—it helps him orientate himself, when he inevitably wakes up. It’s easier to remember where he is when the first thing he sees is a light, and Emile’s dark hair pressed into Nicaise’s nose.

He’d bought Emile a Buzz Lightyear nightlight for his last birthday, and while he’d had the bruise from where the corner of the box Emile had thrown at him had jammed into his arm for a week, it’s still plugged into the wall next to the bed in their apartment. _Their_ apartment.

Nicaise hasn’t woken up from a nightmare like that in months, but he finds that he’s not as scared as he used to be. He’s _scared_ , of course he’s scared, but he’s not curled into a ball on the floor. He’s not biting bloody imprints into his knuckles to keep himself from screaming, or clawing red marks down his arms with his own fingernails. Instead, Nicaise is standing in the doorway of the bedroom and watching his boyfriend sleep, and he’s only grinding his teeth a little bit.

Emile hums a little in his sleep, flops over bonelessly onto his back, and lets out one of his hideous snores. Nicaise stifles a laugh, and takes a step back. He’s better off waiting it out in the kitchen, hopefully with a cup of coffee if Damen’s fancy machine doesn’t make too much noise.

He doesn’t know the layout of this house very well yet—Laurent and Damen had bought it a few months ago, and it’s only the second time Nicaise has visited—but he guides himself into the kitchen with one hand dragging quietly along the wall of the hallway. He expects it to be dark, or for Damen to have left a low light on for navigation. And he’s right about that; only one of the lights in the kitchen is on, at half-brightness. It casts the room in strange, half-warm shadows. The windows are open, bringing damp, cool summer air drifting into the kitchen.

And Laurent, sitting at the table with his hands wrapped around a steaming mug, looks up.

For a moment, neither of them speak. Nicaise folds his arms, glances down at the wood floor, and then back up at Laurent. Instead of saying anything, Laurent tilts his head toward the chair next to his, and stands to walk toward the kettle. Nicaise thinks about protesting, but the silence is really too nice to break.

He lets his mind wander for a while, until Laurent is sitting back down at the table and setting a mug in front of him that disappointingly smells nothing like coffee, and Nicaise is forced to remember where he is. He reaches out, wraps his hands around the mug, and takes a quick sip of the scalding chamomile tea. It’s what Emile drinks before bed, he thinks. With a spoonful of honey, and paired with whatever sweet thing happens to be in their cupboard or freezer that week. Nicaise drinks, and Laurent drinks, and neither of them say anything until their cups are empty.

“I like Emile,” Laurent says, after neither of them have touched their cups for what must be almost five minutes now. Nicaise glances at him, glances away. “He’s good for you.”

“I guess.” It’s as much as Nicaise thinks he’s willing to say, until he opens his mouth again. “I used to think you and Damen were faking it all the time.”

“Faking what?” Neither of them are speaking much above a whisper. Outside, Nicaise can hear the screeching cicadas, and kind of wishes he were back in California.

“Being happy,” he finally says. He can hear the edge of Laurent’s fingernail tracing a swirling design onto the wood table. Nicaise crosses his legs on the chair and bends over them, back hunched. He’s almost twenty-four, but most of the time he still feels like a child. It’s a long time before Laurent answers him.

“Sometimes, it felt like I was. When all I could think about were the bad parts, and the things he didn’t know. I made myself smile at him a lot, for a while, even when I wasn’t feeling happy.”

“Why did you stop?” It’s easier to say everything without looking at Laurent. That’s usually true for most of their conversations, but for most of their conversations Nicaise makes himself do it anyway. Now, though, he lets himself be vulnerable. Laurent hums a little, like Emile had in bed, and the sound of his fingernail on the table stops.

“You almost died.” He’s straining, when he says it, to sound like it doesn’t affect him. Nicaise looks up, one more time, and sees Laurent’s hand clenched into a fist.

“It was almost ten years ago.” That doesn’t mean anything. Nicaise _knows_ it doesn’t mean anything, not when the scar on the side of his neck is still as visible as ever. Most people have the decency not to mention it, but he has a different, wildly implausible story to tell every time a stranger points it out.

“I thought I was watching you die,” Laurent says.

“I thought I was going to,” Nicaise replies, as quietly as he can while still being heard.

“I’m glad you didn’t.” It’s not often that he and Laurent talk like this. It feels so ugly, and painful. Nicaise would go his whole life without thinking about it again, if he could. But that’s just not possible—not for either of them.

“How much does Emile know?” Nicaise knows that Laurent wasn’t the one to tell Damen. He’ll never know exactly what happened—even though he was there for it—because he had been in a coma, medically induced, and couldn’t hear anything said over his deathbed. Nicaise knows that Laurent regrets that.

“Enough. That there was someone older, a long time ago. That he hurt me.” It had taken him almost a year of therapy to even begin to admit that to himself. Not in the physical sense—it had been easy to say _he hurt me_ and mean it about the gauze-padded wounds on his skin—but deeper than that. “He hasn’t really pressed me for details.”

“It’s been two years, Nicaise. He’ll have to know some time.” Nicaise looks up, sharp. Laurent’s face is in profile; he’s not looking at Nicaise. He doesn’t really seem to be looking at anything. It’s strange, to see that familiarly _Laurent_ expression on the face of a man closing in on thirty. Aging had once seemed such an impossible concept. But then, Laurent is only six years older than Nicaise himself.

“Says who?” He snaps, the loudest thing he’s said since waking up. His voice is rough with sleep, and he swallows to smooth out the roughness. Laurent just shrugs, and pulls his knees up to his chest. His feet are bare, his form wrapped in one of the matching couples’ robes Damen had gotten the two of them for Christmas.

He’s not wearing his wedding ring.

The silence returns, and Nicaise thinks.

“I think I wanted to die,” he finally says. He watches Laurent, but there’s not a hint of surprise. A long pause, and Laurent exhales quietly into the night.

“For a few seconds, after I heard what happened, I hoped that you were.” Laurent’s eyes flutter closed, forehead bunching like he can taste the memory on the tip of his tongue. “I thought—it might be better for you. It might hurt less.”

“And then?”

“And then Damen woke up.”

He leaves it at that, and Nicaise understands.

“I don’t know how to tell him.” A pause. He hears Laurent’s unspoken apology, knows he doesn’t want to hear it aloud. “I keep thinking—it was so long ago. I don’t know how to explain to him...I don’t know how to explain anything. Why I wanted it.”

“You didn’t,” Laurent says, automatically, like Nicaise is sure both their therapists have trained them to. But Laurent knows the truth; knows it better than anyone. The doubt— _I do, I did want it—_ never really leaves. Nicaise has learned that, among a hundred other things. Some parts of it never leave. Some parts Nicaise couldn’t remember if he wanted to.

“I don’t know how to make him understand,” he says, and maybe that’s the worst part. He could talk it out for hours, explain the when and the how and the who of it all, but he can’t make Emile understand any of it.

Laurent’s robe rustles, and Nicaise closes his eyes a short second before Laurent’s hand wraps around his. He hums again, a little higher, and scrapes the backsides of his fingernails along the curve of Nicaise’s palm.

“Maybe he doesn’t have to understand.” Part of Nicaise wants to pull away. But Laurent’s hands are as familiar as breathing, and they’re still kind of warm from holding the tea, and Nicaise doesn’t _really_ want the gentle touch to stop. “Maybe he just has to listen.”

The house is almost silent. If Nicaise strains, he can hear someone snoring, and he can’t tell if it’s Emile or Damen, or maybe Hamlet. The cicadas are screaming, and Nicaise’s heart has slowed to a smoother rhythm, and the sun is going to rise in three or so hours. It’s a long time before he feels like speaking again. Laurent’s words settle around his shoulders like a quilt; heavy and warm but not suffocating.

 _Just listen_ , he thinks, and rubs his thumb over Laurent’s wrist.

“I should go back to bed,” he finally says, and makes no move to rise from the table. Laurent nods, the unruly golden waves of his hair brushing his cheekbones, and lets go of his hand.

“I’ll make you breakfast when everyone wakes up.”

“Thanks.” It’s easy to say, to Laurent. And to Damen too, most of the time. Damen was the first person Nicaise saw, when he woke up ten years ago. He vaguely remembers blinking his eyes open a few times before that, but Damen was there the first time he was lucid; dead asleep in the chair next to the bed, unshaven and still in the previous day’s suit. He’d held the water cup to Nicaise’s lips, and only looked concerned when Nicaise had thrown it erratically—with poor muscle control—at the side of his face a few minutes later.

“Go back to bed,” Laurent encourages. Nicaise stands up, and walks to the archway that leads to the hall, and presses the flat of his hand against the wall.

“Good night, Laurent.”

“Good night, Nicaise.”

Emile is still asleep when Nicaise crawls into the bed next to him, but at least he’s stopped snoring. He falls a little bit into Nicaise’s shoulder as the bed adjusts to the weight of a second man, and Emile buries his face in Nicaise’s shoulder like he was born there. In the light from the bathroom, Nicaise can see Emile’s dark, wild hair sticking up into his line of vision.

Nicaise presses a quiet kiss to Emile’s forehead, and wraps an arm around his boyfriend’s shoulder, and falls back into quiet, dreamless sleep.


End file.
